Collectors at Great Oregon Steam-Up are always steamed about their passion

View full sizeAndrew Burton/The OregonianZach Smith (top foreground) and his co-pilot, Matt Wenman, operate the Smith family's 1880-made Case steam traction engine at The Great Oregon Steam-Up on Saturday. Smith says his family purchased it in 1955 and has kept it in working condition ever since. According to Robert Smith, Zach's grandfather, in 1990 the Smithsonian Institution confirmed their steam traction engine as the oldest in the United States.

BROOKS -- David Boyce sat under a shade tree next to the 95-year-old growling, dripping, churning, smoking family beast, the Russell.

The Russell, a 12-horsepower steam tractor engine built in Massillon, Ohio, enjoyed a family reunion of sorts Saturday at

. About a dozen similar steam-powered tractors, a few of them Russells, churned nearby.

"The thing that's amazing to me," said 13-year-old Boyce, "is that half the people here don't even know how it runs. They think it's gas or diesel or something like that."

Boyce was ready to tell anyone this Russell runs on a steady diet of wood. But it could run on coal or straw, just like many of the hundreds of yesteryear machines on display at the Steam-Up, the annual gathering and demonstration that continues today and next weekend.

There's a feel of a state fair to the Steam-Up, where the sweet and acrid smells of burning wood and diesel mingle with that of corn dogs, curly fries, currywurst, and elephant ears. If you go, expect more than 5,000 other visitors to be strolling the 64 acres.

View full sizeAndrew Burton/The OregonianDana Geraths spent his time at The Great Oregon Steam-Up taking photos of the antique, steam-powered machinery with turn-of-the-20th-century photographic equipment.

This is the 40th anniversary of the Steam-Up. Before then, similar events were held in Woodburn, Gervais and Silverton.

But in 1970, Western Antique Power was incorporated and purchased a permanent site that's home to more than a dozen clubs dedicated to antique machinery.

One of those is the Western Steam Fiends Association, of which David Boyce and his parents are members.

"My dad got me started on it when I was about 6," said Boyce, entering eighth grade at North Marion Middle School near Aurora.

His mother also has stoked the fire. Laurie Boyce remembered being among perhaps five women when she participated in her first Steam-Up in the early 1980s.

Her husband, Lowell, purchased the Russell in 1977 and was a regular at the Steam-Up, where he'd spend 16-hour days.

View full sizeAndrew Burton/The OregonianDavid Boyce, 13, of Aurora (left) has been coming to the Great Oregon Steam-Up since he was 3 months old. In 2009, he participated in a five-month steam engine school and is now able to operate the 1915 Russell steam traction engine his father bought in 1977. Robert Wenz, 13, (right) participated in the steam engine school in 2010.

"I just came out here and started mainly just steering and firing the boiler," Laurie Boyce said. "That got kind of boring after awhile so I operated the gears."

She also got her start with the Russell by researching its history for a college English term paper:

A dozen Silverton-area wheat farmers in 1915 pooled $100 each to purchase the Russell. It would chug from field to field, then tether its flywheel with a belt to a machine that separated wheat from chaff.

It sat idle by the 1950s. And in 1977, the family of one of three surviving buyers sold the Russell -- nicknamed "Jane" for the screen actress -- to Lowell Boyce.

He sees his machine as a teaching tool.

"There's not very many young people out there interested in steam," he says.

That's one of the reasons Steven Ribeiro of Independence brought his three grandsons to the Dezotell Building, where miniature engines churned away.

But introducing these machines to a younger generation may not be a guarantee of future interest.

Thomas Currans, 77, of Dundee walked the grounds of the Steam-Up, where he'd not visited for at least 30 years.

Antique Powerland; quarter-mile west of Exit 263 off Interstate 5, about eight miles north of Salem

Special event:

Oregon National Guard Appreciation on July 31 and Aug. 1. Approximately 15 pieces of rare military vehicles will be displayed by the Military Collectors Club of Oregon and the Oregon Military Museum at Camp Withycombe.